Android 5.0 (Key Lime Pie) Release Date And News

Posted By: Poketors - July 03, 2013

The Android 5.0 release date is currently looking to be some time in October 2013, although we originally expected to see it break cover at Google IO which was scheduled to take place from May 15 to May 17 2013, a month earlier than 2012's June dates. Given that Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at 2012's IO conference, it seemed reasonable to expect to see Android 5.0 at this year's event.

On 31 January, a Google IO showing of Android 5.0 looked more likely when screengrabs of a Qualcomm roadmap were leaked, showing Android 5.0 as breaking cover between April and June 2013.

But on 24 April 2013, we read that Key Lime Pie may not make its debut at Google IO after all. Apparently, "trusty internal sources" told a site called Gadgetronica that Google decided to delay Android 5.0 for two to four months to give hardware makers the chance to properly roll out Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

The notion of Key Lime Pie being off the menu at Google IO raised itself again on 26 April when Android 4.3 surfaced in server logs over at Android Police. Those log entries supposedly came from Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices running an updated version of Jelly Bean - Android 4.3 - and apparently the IP addresses of those devices trace back to Google HQ. So might that point to a delayed Android 5.0 arrival?

And on 13 May, we got our (almost certain) confirmation that there would be no serving of Key Lime Pie at Google IO from Sundar Pichai, Google's new head of Android. Pichai told Wired that this year's IO is "not a time when we have much in the way of launches of new products or a new operating system". Boo! "Both on Android and Chrome, we're going to focus this IO on all the kinds of things we're doing for developers so that they can write better things," he added.

Google wasn't entirely quiet on Android 5 at its IO conference, though. As Android Authority spotted, during a session entitled 'Android Protips 3: Making Apps Work Like Magic' Android developer relations tech lead Reto Meier teased attendees with a slide showing an Android eating a piece of Key Lime Pie and later with a game where the options included Jelly Bean and Key Lime Pie.